Gaia's Primeval Light
by roisaber
Summary: Instead of using the power of Holy to defend itself from Meteor, the Planet chooses to resurrect Aerith instead. Gaia entrusts Aerith with Sephiroth's heart in hopes of banishing Jenova and saving itself from ultimate destruction. Aerith confronts her nemesis in a secret library beneath the Forgotten Capital.


I stood in the Alabaster Library, threading through ancient books. The Lifestream was strong in the great, forgotten capital of the Cetra, Cetrabad, and its radiance combined with the freezing weather kept much of the material from decaying over the centuries. I was searching the various bookshelves for the key that would allow me to unlock the power of Meteor. I was determined to honor my pact with Jenova – I would hand her a wounded Planet for her assimilation, and she, in turn, would make me a god to rule by her side. I thumbed through one tome after the next, coming up blank.

Behind me, I heard a sudden gurgle from the fountain. It was connected to a vast subterranean network that fed numerous springs in the forgotten city, and I assumed a stray air bubble had rumbled up from its chthonic depths. But what I saw when I turned around made my heart sink into the bottom of my boots. Somehow, the caverns had managed to vomit up the corpse of Aerith, as though to mock me. Furiously, I resolved to ignore it; let the Planet choke on its own revenge. I didn't get a chance to ignore the body for long.

I suddenly heard the lifeless corpse gasp, and I turned around to see Aerith leaning over the side of the pool, vomiting blood and water onto the white marble of the floor. I was too dumbfounded to even be angry, and I stared at her in blank incomprehension. What? How? No one could endure an injury from the Masamune and live to tell the tale, except if – then, all at once, it all made sense. She was a Cetra, and even the sacred blade wasn't enough to entomb her if the Planet itself intervened. I watched her, unsure of how to react.

She looked up at me, struggling to pull herself over the side of the fountain. And yet, I saw something in her eyes I couldn't understand. I saw triumph, and contempt.

"You've failed, Sephiroth," she finally rasped when she could force words out of her drowned lungs. "Meteor…"

She coughed for another minute, and I just stood and watched her. I kept my face carefully blank.

"Meteor will never fall," she hissed.

I shook my head. "You're too late, girl. I already have the Meteor materia, and somewhere in this library is the key I need to activate it. What can you possibly do? You can't even stand."

Her laughter was painful to me as she choked it out of her injured larynx. I reached down to my sword, but she only stared at me triumphantly.

"What will you do?" she murmured. "Stab me again?"

"If I must," I said.

Somehow, my voice sounded uncertain, even to myself. I noticed that there was something missing.

"Your Holy materia?" I demanded angrily. "Where is it!?"

Aerith smirked. "So you knew, did you? It's too late. Even you won't be able to recover it now, it's been reabsorbed into the Lifestream."

"Impossible," I growled.

"If you're going to kill me, hurry up and do it already, will you? I feel pretty awful."

"Who cares? Unless you know anything about pre-Cataclysm literature, you may as well just go. I'll just find you and kill you later if it becomes necessary."

Aerith finally dragged herself out of the fountain, and she fell to the marble, breathing heavily and coughing. She was neither a concern nor a threat to me, so I went back to searching the numerous bookshelves of the Alabaster Library, searching for the missing piece of the puzzle. She pulled herself into sitting position, leaning against the side of the fountain. When I looked back, I was surprised to see that through the ragged hole in her dress, her wound was entirely healed. The Planet was a powerful enemy, indeed.

"What do you want?" she suddenly asked.

I shoved the book I was holding back into the shelf. It contained taxonomies of plants and animals from the pre-Cataclysm days, and had little useful information on magic. Well, what harm could it possibly do to answer her question?

"You should know the answer to that as well as I do, girl."

"My name is _Aerith_," she hissed angrily.

"I know. I don't care. Your entire life, you've been different from others, just like me. You've been mistreated and hunted and cast aside because of what you are. The Planet once belonged to the Cetra, and now it belongs to their bastard, mutant spawn who have no understanding of magic and no regard for the broader picture – no understanding that the Planet is a living organism, and no interest in its lifecycle. It would be no exaggeration to say that the people of this world are spiritually retarded."

"How could you say such a thing!?" she demanded.

"Because it's true," I answered easily. "And I'd be better off if they just – went away. We could restart the cycle of life on this planet, and I could reign alongside my mother as a living, breathing god."

She answered contemptuously, "So it's about power, then."

"If you want to put it so crudely." I thumbed through another book, on astronavigation. "Frankly, you're nothing but an obstacle. It was supposed to be me, my mother, and a refreshed world waiting eagerly for new life. You weren't supposed to be part of the equation."

"So kill me."

"Why bother? It's not like you can stop me now."

"The Planet itself will stop you. You're right, it's a living organism, and it will act in its own defense."

I shook my head. "The Planet is ignorant. It's the humans that are killing it. You of all people should be able to understand the truth of what I'm saying. If the humans aren't stopped, they'll turn all the land into a copy of Midgar and all the sea into their sewer."

She sighed. "You don't believe in miracles, do you, Sephiroth?"

"No. None but the ones I create with my own hands. Damn it! This library makes no sense. The books aren't indexed by subject, or title, or anything I can understand. It seems like the librarian just put them in place randomly!"

"I think you're a very sad person," she said.

That finally made me angry.

"And what do you know? The Planet is your mother, but Jenova is mine! Tell me, is she evil just because she came from the stars? Is she evil because she is different from Gaia, with a different mind and a different agenda? Didn't you hear her screams as they tortured her in Shinra's laboratories? They can never be forgiven for what they've done to her; never!"

Aerith was quiet for a long minute, and I was too distracted to keep looking for the unlock code. The nerve of the girl to talk to me that way as if she had any idea of what it was like to have Jenova screaming in her ear at all hours of every day and night. Whenever a Shinra scientist pushed a probe into Jenova's burned and disfigured flesh, I was there. Whenever they shocked her with high voltage electricity just to see how she'd react, I was there. Whenever laughed in front of her tank, mocking her shrieks of agony, I was right there with her, and the only one on all Gaia who truly understood what she was going through. I thought about walking right over to where she was sitting and stabbing her through the gut.

"What is it you really want, Sephiroth?" she asked, her voice finally unclouded with water.

"What kind of stupid question is that? What I want doesn't matter. The only thing that counts is what you have."

"I think it's a question worth asking. What do you want, Sephiroth?"

I sighed and put back the next book. It was obvious she wouldn't leave me alone until I offered her some kind of answer.

"A place to live free of the tyranny of Shinra. The right to govern my own life and my own affairs as I see fit, without having to answer to landlords or Colonels or business executives. I want to create a world where Jenova can be freed from the shackles of her agony, and rule as the rightful goddess she was meant to be. So you see, it doesn't matter what I want. All that matters is what I have."

"And why is that impossible?" Aerith countered.

"Because, you foolish girl! Jenova and Gaia have been at war from the moment she fell from the stars. Do you know her story? She was once a brave and beautiful goddess who reigned justly over a paradise world. But her wicked vizier betrayed her and lay siege to her domain. She refused to use force to get her way, and in time she was overcome by his evil and cast out into the lifeless void between the stars. She flew through space _alone_ for untold aeons. And when she fell, Jenova was badly injured in the crash, disfigured and crippled beyond all recognition. Jenova tried to heal her ruined body with energy she drew from the site of the impact, but the Planet rejected her, and she was only barely able to sustain her life. Are you telling me that the Planet will repent and accept her now?"

"There must be a way!" Aerith objected. "The Planet is loving and forgiving, and that's part of why it hasn't taken action to destroy humankind, in spite of all its sins! You're so selfish! All you can think of is your pain and your ambition. What about the pain and ambition of the millions of humans who are just trying to make the best lives they can – all those millions of lives you are prepared to snuff out to get your way?"

Somehow, Aerith retrieved her Princess Rod, and I watched as she slowly and haltingly pulled herself to her feet, using the quarterstaff for support. I kept my hand on the hilt of the Masamune, waiting to see what she would do. In spite of her furious glare, I didn't see any sign of aggressive intent. I stayed wary.

"You call Jenova a parasite," I announced slowly. "You call her a monster, and an alien, and a demon. It would require the energy of millions of lives to return her to life. Do you really think the Planet would offer her those lives? In nature, all animals consume other life forms to grow, heal, and reproduce. And all of those threatened lives take action to try to defend themselves – even plants excrete chemicals to warn other plants about the predation of animals! That is the unmistakable truth."

To my amazement, I discovered that Aerith was crying. I shook my head in complete befuddlement.

"How dare you, girl? What right do you have to cry for Jenova's plight?"

Aerith said through her tears, "I – I just never…"

"Who cares?" I picked up another book from the shelf. "You only have what you have. Nothing else matters."

"What if - "

"Don't bother. I've researched the problem extensively, ever since I learned the truth in Nibelheim."

I went to the next shelf and absorbed myself in a book that looked promising. The skill to read and write ancient Cetra was a gift from Jenova and my own research, and the book I was reading seemed to definitely have an extensive analysis of obscure material. I was astonished when I felt something solid and warm press up against me from behind, and I turned to see Aerith wrapping her arms around me. I tried to brush her off.

"What do you think you're doing?" I demanded. "Stupid girl."

"Sephiroth, you don't have to do this," she whispered.

"No? And what means to you have to restore Jenova to life?"

"You said it yourself, Sephiroth."

I finally untangled her arms from my chest, and I turned around to glare at her.

"I said what, exactly?"

"It's the nature of all living things to live, to grow, and eventually, to die," she murmured. "Jenova should have died all those years ago. When she was cast into space, she slowly but surely became a monster."

I felt dead inside. "What a thing to say. That's my mother, you know."

"I know. Which is why… which is why you have to let her go, Sephiroth."

I didn't answer her for a long minute.

"She's all I have."

She looked down at her brown boots. "That's not true."

"Oh?" I barked with malicious laughter. "I have the Shinra, then? I have that idiot puppet Cloud? I have millions and millions of humans who would just as soon kill me as lay eyes on me? Oh, you're right, girl; my life is _rich_ with content."

"You have me."

I stopped. What was she talking about?

"What does this have to do with Jenova. Do you have an answer, or not?"

"I have the answer you don't want to hear. Jenova must return to the Lifestream, and be absorbed by the Planet in due course."

I blinked. "I think you have that backwards. Jenova must absorb the spirit of Gaia."

"You don't understand," she murmured. "The Planet – Gaia – can absorb what's left of Jenova's energy and return her to the cycle of living and dying. She doesn't have to be locked in that prison of a body, any longer. And all you have to do is _let. Her. Go_, Sephiroth."

I dismissed her ravings with a wave, but Aerith was insistent.

"Please, Sephiroth, listen to me. Jenova may have been all those things you said, once. But now she's a prisoner and a slave. You keep talking about a fresh start this, and a fresh start that, but you refuse to actually _allow_ her to experience a fresh start." She pointed an accusatory finger at me. "_You_ are the one keeping her a prisoner, Sephiroth. You, and her own fear of death."

I … I vacillated.

"I've been dead, Sephiroth. I was dead a half hour ago." She snorted with ironic laughter. "You know what? It's not so bad. It's bright, and warm, and soothing, and peaceful. Don't you think it's time for Jenova to experience some of that peace at long last?"

"What… what are you asking of me?"

"Let's go to the North Crater. We'll use the power of Meteor to dissolve both the Black Materia and Jenova into the Lifestream, where they can experience some of that peace. The Planet dissolved the White Materia Holy to resurrect me; I know it's possible."

How can I possibly answer her?


End file.
